Debris from a Starship rocket over Turks & Caicos. Credit: The Independent / YouTube SpaceX’s seventh test flight of its marquee rocket, Starship, ended with an unintentional fireworks show. That is, the rocket exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, raining a brilliant stream of debris down through Earth’s atmosphere. It’s not clear what caused the explosion, but the event was captured on video by people on the ground and forced airplanes to divert course to avoid the superheated bits of falling rocketry. Starship launched from SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas at 4:37 p.m. local time on Thursday. The company’s Mechazilla tower managed to catch the Starship’s huge (233-foot-tall, or 71-meter) Super Heavy booster rocket, a calling card of SpaceX’s bid to make spaceflight a more cost-effective and sustainable endeavor. SpaceX lost telemetry with the vehicle before the burn stage was completed. This happened about 8.5 minutes into the flight. “Initial data indicates a fire developed in the aft section of the ship, leading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly,” according to a SpaceX release. In other words, the rocket’s upper stage dramatically blew up in flight. Footage of the explosion and its aftermath looks like something out of science fiction: bright orange-yellow streaks of light passing through the sky like so many alien spacecraft might do. Observers on the ground in Turks & Caicos and passengers aboard cruise ships in the Caribbean Sea captured the dramatic footage. Here's the exact moment Ship 33 experienced a RUD. https://t.co/in2nZBWNV8 pic.twitter.com/iI7DtLiZlE